Book Review | 2001: A Space Odyssey bu Arthur C. Clarke

Series: N/A
Published: 1968
Publisher: Arrow Books
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Rating: ★★

When an enigmatic monolith is found buried on the moon, scientists are amazed to discover that it’s at least 3 million years old. Even more amazing, after it’s unearthed the artifact releases a powerful signal aimed at Saturn. What sort of alarm has been triggered? To find out, a manned spacecraft, the Discovery, is sent to investigate. Its crew is highly trained–the best–and they are assisted by a self-aware computer, the ultra-capable HAL 9000. But HAL’s programming has been patterned after the human mind a little too well. He is capable of guilt, neurosis, even murder, and he controls every single one of Discovery’s components. The crew must overthrow this digital psychotic if they hope to make their rendezvous with the entities that are responsible not just for the monolith, but maybe even for human civilization.

On my copy of this book, there wasn’t actually a synopsis, so I went into this book not knowing an awful lot about what it was about and what kind of things to expect – a blank canvas per se. The synopsis above makes it sound like an amazing adventure but I do not think that that reflects anything and if anything it exaggerates what really happens.

First of all, this book was written before any space travel of any value had actually been accomplished – at the time this was a new and profound outlook on what space may be like as it was seen as futuristic. This was written in the 1960s and I am reading this in 2013, so maybe that hindered my view of this book a little. Had I read it in the 60s, however, I probably would have been a lot more intrigued, but I found this book to be written like a non fiction novel, (or what I’d think a non fiction novel to be like) in the way that everything was described to the most minutest of details, and I found this to be very harrowing.

I found it to be very bland – full of figures, suits (pardon the unintentional space pun), and too many ‘facts’ – I wanted there to be adventure, they’re in space for crying out loud. This may make me sound quite naive, but in the 60s, as aforementioned, space wasn’t a well known thing and I thought Clarke could have brought a little more imagination into the mix, there were, and still are, endless possibilities regarding space travel, and a book is the medium in which is take imagination one step further.

The sections of the book where things started to get interesting were my favourite, the take over of Hal and the penultimate ending, which is the only part when the overwhelming description became absolutely brilliant and showed a bit of imagination. On second thoughts, these were the only interesting parts of the book.

Now I can appreciate that in 1968 when this was written, that it would have been something new, and exciting, and something everyone knew little about, so at the time this would have been an amazing book. If I could time travel and read this book in the past I would, just to appreciate the novelty, but reading this in 2013 is such a let down.

Book Review | A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Series: N/A
Published: September 2012
Publisher: Walker
Format: Hardback
Pages: 237
Rating: ★★★★★

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting — he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. 

This is one of the most creative books about illness I’ve ever read about; it’s told from the point of view of Conor who is dealing with the idea of his mother suffering with a terminal cancer. It’s about his fears, grief and sufferings primarily – the family suffer as much as the diagnosed in a sense.

It is written like a children’s book in a simplistic, fairytale manner, but the content I would say is aimed for an older audience. The themes in the book are quite hard hitting and complex at times, and this creates an odd lull to the book as you’re not entirely sure how it’s supposed to be perceived. This creates for an easy read, and I got through this book in a day, not just because of the simplistic manner that this book was written, but also due to the fact that it was such an enthralling read with something new always around the corner.

The writing is laced with emotion, and from the very beginning you sympathise with this young boys imminent loss – he goes into himself, he acts out and he lets his emotions get the better of him sometimes, but this comes with the roller-coaster of a journey he’s having to go through at the moment. Although only 13, Conor is very relatable to anyone at any age going through the same thing – we all feel small and vulnerable in times of need, and we all need someone to hang on to.

Being a “fairytale” as such, it comes with a moral, and a strong one at that. This is the kind of book that leaves you hanging, not for the story, but for yourself – it makes you think about life and how precious it is even with the ups and downs that we so dearly despise. A wonderful read, and I can’t say more than that without ruining the magic of a first time read.

Book Review | The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

Series: Nursery Crime #1
Published: 2006
Publisher: Hodder
Format: Paperback
Pages: 398
Rating: ★★★★

It’s Easter in Reading – a bad time for eggs – and the shattered, tuxedo-clad corpse of local businessman Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III has been found lying beneath a wall in a shabby part of town. Humpty was one of life’s good guys – so who would want him knocked off? And is it a coincidence that his ex-wife has just met with a sticky end down at the local biscuit factory? A hardened cop on the mean streets of the Thames Valley’s most dangerous precinct, DI Jack Spratt has seen it all, and something tells him this is going to be a tough case to crack…

Punny funny murder mystery; if I had to describe this book, those four words sum it up to a tee. Fforde is known for his funny and ingenuitive concepts, and his even funnier writing style, he combines fun children’s characters with puns-a-plenty with the seriousness of a murder case – an oxymoron of a book if ever there was one. 

The characters were based around nursery rhyme characters for the most part, and all but one of them I found, extracted a personality very well from their very own piece of poetry or prose. There were little things spotted around the story which related to the supposed nursery rhymes; the forgetting of Rumpelstiltzkin’s name or Jack trading in a painting of a cow for some magical beans being a couple of examples. This wasn’t a hilarious book as such, but one that made you inwardly laugh at the irony of it all, which made it very subtly clever. There were definitive ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters in this book and this was primarily obvious from the start, we loved the good guys and despised the bad guys and this flowed quite nicely with the nursery theme. 

The crunch of the book was the crime solving element, and although it had funny quips surrounding the main action it was still a serious affair and this came across in the writing. There was a genuine crime to be solved, it didn’t just end after a couple of people being questioned, it was a full on police investigation with clues, red herrings and the odd lie or few. I was certainly intrigued to finish the book and see who had committed the crime, as I can honestly say  that I had no clue and was going along with the investigations and felt as though I was figuring it out for myself with Jack Spratt and Mary Mary by my side which is a wonderful element I love in books. It wasn’t predictable in the slightest and it didn’t even get boring, as when it started to slow, something would come in and throw everything up in the air again and they would have to pick up the pieces.

This is the second Jasper Fforde book that I have read, I loved ‘Shades of Grey’ and I can most certainly say that that wasn’t a fluke as this one was fabulous and I will most definitely be reading an array of his books in the future.

Book Review | About A Boy By Nick Hornby

Series: N/A
Published: 1998
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd.
Format: Kindle eBook
Pages: 307
Rating: ★★★★

*May contain spoilers*

Will is thirty-six, comfortable and child-free. And he’s discovered a brilliant new way of meeting women – through single-parent groups. Marcus is twelve and a little bit nerdish: he’s got the kind of mother who made him listen to Joni Mitchell rather than Nirvana. Perhaps they can help each other out a little bit, and both can start to act their age.

This book is a story of a coming of age for both the older and newer generations alike; although the results may end up being a little different along the way, it shows a lovely progression of character development up to the point of finding oneself.

Marcus; a shy, weird, pre teen boy, is faced with a life of bullying and torment while his mother is completely oblivious to everything – she makes him interested in kitsch and slightly obscure things which a “normal” boy of his age would not be interested in. His mother is a wreck, and through the book, Marcus has a lot of things to deal with on top of family problems. His progression through these ordeals is extraordinary, and the amount that one character can change so much, without it being sudden, right before your eyes is an outstanding feat.

Will, on the other hand, is a shallow layabout that doesn’t really do much with his day other than read, watch neighbours and try to chat up random women at single parent conventions. Will matures throughout the book and this comes across in his spoken words as well as his thoughts and actions – he becomes a lot more selfless and just starts to take the barriers down when it comes to feeling any kind of emotion other than vanity.

Marcus and Will as a duo throughout the book were a pleasure to read, their bats of conversation were so straight to the point and they just seemed to bounce off of each other as well as help each other progress as people. In fact they each had a hand in the others development as characters as they each had something to give to the other.

This book is pretty much a character and feelings based book, and this point is proven solely by the lack of any particular plot or storyline. There were times when I didn’t actually think that the book was going anywhere, and it just seemed to be stuck in a rut – things were being overly described unnecessarily, and I was just getting bored. Thinking about it afterwards, there is no particular storyline as it is just a book about finding yourself. I thought that made it slightly lacking to a degree as every single other box was ticked in my “good book checklist” bar the story. Don’t get me wrong, the depths behind this book were stunning, and I found myself highlighting a lot of the quotes on my kindle as I went as little bits of advice for myself even, but  I just would have liked to have had some structure.

Thoroughly enjoyed this read, Hornby’s definitely plucked my character involvement strings with this book, and I’d gladly pick up another of his in the future.

Book Review | The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

Series: The Darkest Minds #1
Published: December 2012
Publisher: Hyperion
Format: Hard Cover
Pages: 488
Rating: ★★★

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.

The Darkest Minds is the first in a trilogy of books that are due to be released sometime in the future and I was dying to read this book as soon as I heard about it. It only got released last year in America and was gutted when I couldn’t get it in any bookstores here in the UK so decided to nab it off of Amazon – the effort I made into getting the book was not worth the book. This book grabbed me from the get go and I found it difficult to put down, this is only, however, on a storyline basis. The premise of the book was fantastic and well thought out, it was such a dark dystopian novel plot wise in the shockfactor – the fact that children as young as 10 were being taken to concentration camps was ridiculous and the effect that that would have upon them in later life is unimaginable. Some of the writing and characters however, I found left a lot to be desired.

The story was shown in a first perspective from our main protagonist Ruby Daly and this was probably something that in this book in particular I wasn’t keen on. This one sided commentary on the action wasn’t enough for me, I wanted to know what other people felt and how other people were dealing with the situations at hand. This was especially relevant when it comes to the secondary characters of Liam, Chubs and Zu – I felt as though I didn’t know them at all, that they were quite one dimensional and I certainly (especially at the end) didn’t feel anything for them in the emotions department. You saw how they treated one another, how they felt to a certain extent but I never found that I could empathise or sympathise with them in any shape or form. 

I found the relationship between Ruby and X (I shall say x because it isn’t instantly obvious) to be quite forced as well – it went from the occasional pet name, which he would actually say to every girl, to suddenly being smitten. It wasn’t needed in the story and I don’t think every YA novel needs to have a romance in it to make it work, I’m getting quite fed up the predictability of this element in the genre. The story would have worked just as well, if not better without this element as the characters could have focussed more on the bigger problems at hand (and there were enough of them) and grown as people and as a unit as a whole. The occasional description of his hair and the way his muscles looked was just unneccesary when there were bigger things to be worrying about like not being thrown into a concentration camp again. I can understand that they need to have some time to live normal lives but at that moment in time it most definitely wasn’t the right time and place.

The best character was one of the ‘bad guys’ in the book – their lack of characterisation and quick build up didn’t matter as this person was, I found, seen as the mysterious type. The way they spoke, the things they did, just really made me love but hate them as a character which is something that I adore in a book. I really want to talk about this particular character a lot more but it would be giving away a lot of spoilers, but I’ll just leave you with the fact that this character was my favourite.

I really couldn’t put into words how I felt about this book, and it took me a little while to even write this – I just feel as though Bracken let an amazing story slip between her fingers for something quite mediocre instead.

Book Review | Oryx And Crake by Margaret Atwood

Series: MaddAddam Trilogy #1
Published: May 2003
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Format: Hard Cover
Pages: 378
Rating: ★★★

Snowman may be the last man on earth, the only survivor of an unnamed apocalypse. Once he was Jimmy, a member of a scientific elite; now he lives in bitter isolation and loneliness, his only pleasure the watching of old films on DVD. His mind moves backwards and forwards through time, from an agonising trawl through memory to relive the events that led up to sudden catastrophe (most significantly the disappearance of his mother and the arrival of his mysterious childhood companions Oryx and Crake, symbols of the fractured society in which Snowman now finds himself, to the horrifying present of genetic engineering run amok. His only witnesses, eager to lap up his testimony, are “Crakers”, laboratory creatures of varying strengths and abilities, who can offer little comfort. Gradually the reasons behind the disaster begin to unfold as Snowman undertakes a perilous journey to the remains of the bubble-dome complex where the sinister Paradice Project collapsed and near-global devastation began.

This book is a dystopian like no other that I have read, if I thought ‘Shades of Grey’ was different, this is on a whole new level of intensity. It takes place on this Earth many years into the future – we are never given a specific time, but in the way that’s it written, you can feel that it’s not too far off to sound unrealistic; the world is filled with genetically modified animals, new medicines, and science is running the show. The types of things described in the book are things that we are currently trying to work on in the present day, and due to the fact that they have made advancements on all of this, it gets a little bit too realistically creepy. It’s one of those novels where you think to yourself that this technically could be happening to our world in the very near future, and because of this it is quite scary to read at times.

The story follows the perspective of Snowman, or as he used to be known in the old world, Jimmy. It follows him in the present day when the world has become a desolate chaos, and show’s you a recollection from the past from his school years up until now as he deliriously recollects the memories from before, and how the world fell apart. If there was a casting call for the role of the ‘(technically the) only man to be alive at the worlds end’, you wouldn’t imagine anyone like Jimmy; he was a screw up that was always living in somebody else’s shadow, who didn’t really get anywhere in life. Even though this may sound quite odd, I think that Jimmy gave an interesting perspective to read from because of his personality – he wasn’t always confident about what he did, he had his regrets and was plain right stupid a lot of the time – this made it quite relatable as not everyone would act cool and collected and figure things out like in the movies.

The other main characters, Oryx and Crake, as a whole were ridiculously interesting, they had a variety of different upbringings and life stories that shaped them into what they became, and I was intrigued as to the mystery behind them – which there was a lot of, I found myself wanting to read more about their lives than I did about the present day chaos. Sometimes I found them to be a little too vague in the present day, a lot of the things they said got me frustrated as they were so open ended and profound that they just didn’t make any sense. Again, that was probably the allure of mystery that was a key factor in this book, and maybe that was Atwood’s aim, but I can’t help but think that there was something I missed.

For the first 200 pages I found myself flying through this book – it’s a relatively easy read, and the structure of the whole thing was brilliant. For me, it was fresh and unlike anything that I have ever read so I was intrigued as to where this was going to go. After about 200 pages however, I did find myself getting bored, I wasn’t reading as much, and my interest levels were dipping immensely. The book became quite boring, samey, and things were just delved into more than they needed too; a food production chain was described with amazing detail as to the history of their products, and although it’s interesting from a ‘near future’ perspective, it’s quite irrelevant to the story at hand and made me impatient for Atwood to just get on with it. Due to this, and just the general lack of story, the book just fizzled out then for me, and I started page counting, (I don’t do this unless I’m getting bored and want to read another book.) Nothing new or interesting was happening, which was very disappointing as it started so well.

I finished this book not knowing what had happened, I felt as though nothing had actually been resolved – I had more questions than answers which made me frustrated. I just felt as though an amazing novel just slipped through Atwood’s fingers at the last minute, and although I still loved the premise there were definitely pitfalls which let her down.

 

 

Book Review | Shades Of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Series: Shades of Grey #1
Published: December 2009
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Format: Library Book Hard Cover
Pages: 432
Rating: ★★★★★

 Hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane – a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed.For Eddie, it’s love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey…

 

Let’s us start off with the world building – Shades of Grey is set in the future, where colour denotes how high up on the social ladder that you stand, with grey being the bottom of the pile and purple being at the top. If you were a certain colour then you could only see that colour in the world or that part of a colour, for example, if you were a yellow the grass looked yellow due to the fact that you could see the yellow elements of blue and yellow that makes up green. In everybody’s twentieth year they would have an ‘Ishihara’ which is a test to determine what colour you fall under and how much of a perception you have in that colour, 100% being the highest and anything below 10% meant that you were a grey. The complexities and the intricacies of this world building were absolutely phenomenal in the way that they were thought out; it’s based on such an innovative theory of colour that I actually found myself wondering how much time and effort had been put into the thoughts behind this novel. Everything to do with colour had been thought out and dissected in this book without detracting from the story, it was all intertwined within it in fact that the characters ended up telling you more of the information than the description did. 

 

The story is told from Eddie’s point of view, and you get dropped right into the middle of a society that has been living for years under the rules of the collective, (some of these rules are written at the bottom of each chapter title, which I thought was a nice touch as well) and due to the fact that everything is never explained in a whole, you go through the whole book finding out piece by piece things about the society. This is definitely a slow read due to the information about everything being filtered in bit by bit throughout the whole book; this is definitely not a negative point however, as the fact that I had to read through it slowly, meant that I absorbed more about everything and I wasn’t just rushing to finish it. The gradual gain of knowledge also meant that I wasn’t thrown headfirst into a load of facts and information that has to be taken into account all at once, it meant that I could think about it and dissect it as I pleased as I went along and this made for a fun and interesting read.

 

The more you read this book, the more you realise how corrupt and not perfect that society is in comparison to what everyone thinks. The twists of things that you find out are as shocking to you as they are to the characters, as you are finding out everything along the way with them as everything is new to you as well. The revelations that are found out along the way are not predictable in the slightest and I had no inclination that such things were going to arise. 

 

The characters were so (pardon the pun) vibrant, and different, and just plain brilliant. Every colour had their own stereotype to adhere to, and every person within that colour had their own individual way of sticking to that stereotype. The story revolved around Eddie Russet, a red who followed the rules of the collective until he stumbles upon Jane the grey who turns his whole world upside down, and only then does he start to see what’s really going on in the world and how conceited it really is. Through this, Eddie’s development as a character is wonderful, he slowly but surely starts seeing the world for what it really is and you can see him struggling to go against what he has known and has been taught for the entirety of his life. He is quite a naive and clumsy character at times so in his attempts to figure out what’s going on he really doesn’t help himself and at times finds himself in a bit of trouble. Jane of the other hand is the violent, untrusting female character of the book who’s dry humour and sarcasm throughout the book definitely had me laughing. She’s not afraid to speak her mind and tell you what she really thinks despite her lower status among the colours, and her development throughout although subtle, was nicely done. The relationship between the two characters was brilliant, they bounced right back off each other even with their differences and I believe that they were the making of one another. 

 

This book actually makes you think about society as a whole, and not just the fictional one he has created, it makes you wonder what goes on behind the scenes of the world today in comparison to what is expressed in the media for everyone to see – perhaps we are all drones of our own collective. This kind of thought provoking novel is just up my street, and the ideas and imagination behind this book are outstanding – I would give it a standing ovation if I could.

 

 

Book Review | Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Series: Unwind #1
Published: November 2007
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books
Format: Kindle
Pages: 335
Rating: ★★

 

The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child “unwound,” whereby all of the child’s organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn’t technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.

 

Upon reading the synopsis of this book I was thoroughly excited to read something different; a YA dystopian novel with a bit of depth and meaning to it, something dark and haunting. I genuinely thought the whole premise of the idea of ‘unwinding’ teens was incredibly imaginative and looked forward to seeing how the story developed and if there were any dark truths behind everything. To say I was extremely disappointed would be an understatement.

The story is told from the view points of quite a few people, including people who had nothing to do with the storyline (which was pointless), but primarily from the eyes of Connor, Risa and Lev. At the beginning, the way the three view points stories interlaced made me think that perhaps seeing things from three different angles wouldn’t be so bad just because it was really nicely choreographed, if only the rest of the book went along like that in the same fashion. The angles made it confusing, and it wasn’t as if they were long chapters each either, some characters only had a page at a time sometimes and I don’t feel that that is enough to attach with their particular story. The idea of lesser characters getting chapters really frustrated me as well as you as a reader shouldn’t care for these characters as they haven’t been created as the main three have – I don’t want to read a chapter from the eyes of the pawn broker, why is that even necessary? Why couldn’t it have been told from the angle of one of the three? It just all seemed a bit haphazard and more hassle than it was worth.

The plot (or lack of it) was what I was most disappointed about – I felt as though Shusterman had a brilliant idea and just wasted it. Everything seemed either a bit too pre-meditated or really stereotypical, and I found myself rolling my eyes a lot and thinking “oh, how convenient” for a lot of the book. The way the story moved just didn’t excite me or keep me reading the book, and in the end I was more excited to finish the book than I was to see how the book was concluded. The majority of Unwind didn’t actually feature anything to do with the ‘unwinding’ at all and there were points where I completely forgot what the book was primarily about – it just, to me, ended up like any normal YA book with teen angst and rivalry, which bored me immensely as that is exactly what I was trying to get away from.

Every single character annoyed the hell out of me; they were all so self righteous in their own ways and were completely unbelievable. I didn’t feel anything for anyone and I didn’t believe for an instant any of the emotions that they claimed to have felt – it all seemed fake. They all changed so quickly, followed easily and changed sides easily. It just didn’t seem as though they were real people living in the real world, and the fact that everyone seemed to be the same, except the four main people, made it seem a little weird and unrealistic.

The one thing I did like about it however, when it did appear, was the depth of the idea of the ‘bill of life’ that was introduced after the second civil war when the pro choice and pro life armies came to an understanding and opted for the unwinding. The laws around this premise were very well thought out and the ideas behind everything from the ‘storking’ to the ‘unwinding’ and what happens when other people get unwound body parts was just so touching and fascinating at the same time. When the subject was touched it always seemed to move me and make me think about the life as we know it now, and what we take for granted. Another thing was at the beginning of each section there was either a famous quote or an extract of an article relating to the issues at hand, and I felt as though this gave you an insight as to how Shusterman came up with these chilling ideas and it portrays how his imagination works in putting his opinions across in the form of a published book. It’s just a shame that these ideas, as great as they were, weren’t included a great deal in my eyes.

I feel as though this book got too much hype over the idea, rather than the story itself which isn’t what it should be about.

Book Review | The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

The Fault In Our Stars marked a couple of firsts in my life; one being that I have never read a 300 page book in an afternoon, and the other being that I have never before this book even shed a single tear, let alone been a full on emotional wreck from reading a book.

I would also like to point out, before you continue reading further, that I am still quite an emotional wreck at the present time of writing as I wanted the feelings to be raw and at the point of being – so please excuse any poor review on my part as I am clearly just writing from the heart.

Despite the timor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, he final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

A book has never tapped into my emotions quite like this one did upon reading it, the emotions are so raw and pure that you can’t help but feel attachment from the off. These are emotions that any healthy person wouldn’t ever dream of being able to feel as they are a thing that is somewhat taken for granted – I can honestly say that this book made me think about my life and how much I’m not grateful for in the grand scheme of things.

Everything in the life of these two teenagers is taken one day at a time just because of the fact that they don’t know how long they have together – The little things in life get blown to huge proportions, you realise the true necessities in life and the world just seems that much more of a beautiful place. You go through all of this through the eyes of Hazel Grace Lancaster; you hear her thoughts, doubts and worries as well as the laughs, fun and flirting that has to go hand in hand with the pain. This book has taught me that through all the negative you must see the positive in order to go on. Life isn’t just an unless torment out to get you, but something to be treasured. Yes, we all go through bad times, but in order to get to the good times you must first survive the bad and that is what these cancer patients have to go through every single day of their lives.

The characters were the most wonderful I have read in a long time, they were charming and realistic and just so down to earth. I felt the emotions of every single character in the book and related and sympathised with them immensely, (even though that is something that they would have hated) I believed in them so much that they actually felt as though they real people and that they were in real life my friends. I felt as much there for them as they did and were for each other and it’s not every day that an author can create that kind of realistic relatable world that you feel so engrossed in.

John Green is definitely the master of amazing quotes. I normally don’t take note of page numbers or quotes in books, but in this one in particular I found myself sticking little bits of post-it-notes on a lot of the pages just so I would remember a quote or two. They are so wonderfully profound and well written that they pulled on every single one of my heart strings each and every time. Some people might say that the quotes that characters came up with were ‘unrealistic’ or ‘not something a normal teenager would say’, and to that I say to you that they are not normal teenagers; they are cancer patients with not long to live, feel or love. They make every day their last and if that means expressing their feelings in such a profound way, then why on earth shouldn’t they, and who are we to judge how somebody expresses themselves – it is also known in the book that they read an awful lot of literature as well.

To sum this up I have been hysterically crying from about the 260th page through to the end, and that is a mean feat for an author to have that affect on me – I am normally one hard-faced reader that barely sheds a tear for anything with regards to book. To have me watering up behind my eyes is one thing, but to have me in fits of sadness and tears is a totally different thing and I applaud Mr Green for proving me wrong.

“What book has changed your life?” I always hear that phrase being chucked around on booktube and in reviews, and I always thought that it was such a stupid question; How could a book change your life? How could a fictional piece of writing change the way in which you think? The Fault In Our Stars has answered that question for me and I feel like a different person for reading it. It has most definitely made me think about my life and how much I take for granted in this world and overall, I feel I will be haunted and changed by this book for the rest of my life.

★★★★★

Book Review | Pushing The Limits by Katie McGarry

Pushing The Limits is a contemporary novel, and my first novel of this genre was something of a disappointment so with this book I didn’t have very high hopes of liking it even though I’d heard so many good things about this book.

It centres around Echo and Noah – Echo was one of the popular girls at school with the jock boyfriend until one night when she totally changed and came back to school as the freaky girl with the scars on her arms. Unfortunately for Echo, she cannot remember what happened on that night and is on the search for answers. Noah is known as the bad boy of the school, he does drugs, smokes, and has a reputation for sleeping around with girls – but he also has a dark past and his brothers have been taken away from him and put into a different foster care home than he is currently in, he is on the road to try and gain custody of them once and for all. These two stories intertwine throughout the book as they meet each other upon chance and start, little by little, to get to know each other and fall in love, but with the pasts that the two have had would love be enough?

The story is told in the two perspectives of the two characters, Echo and Noah, in interchanging chapters, this I found gave depth to the book as you can see how each character is developing individually than from just one persons outlook on the whole situation. There is no wondering if somebody feels a certain way or is thinking a certain thing because it will always be addressed in the next chapter and because of the fact you’re seeing both sides you tend to want to push people into doing things and start getting interactive with the book itself.

I found myself not wanting to put the book down a lot of the time because I was so in tune with the story and wanting to find out what had actually happened to Echo and the resolve of Noah and his brothers. Nothing was predictable in the slightest, and everything came as a shock to me in the development of the actual storyline and the characters’ issues. At the beginning of the story you think one thing and by the end you’re thinking the exact opposite, I absolutely love that in a book when they can almost convince you of something at the beginning, but at the end you realise that it’s not as bad as you first thought and you get all the reasonings alongside the twists as to what exactly happened in the meantime – (I hope that made sense).

The writing in this book was so emotive and descriptive and that in itself is what drew me in – McGarry definitely knows how to pull on my heart strings and the emotions that she conjured up throughout the book are beyond compare in my eyes. From the reactions of other people, the characters own emotions and the way they are with their parents and around each other, you definitely felt all of their pain, angst and plain raw emotion. The only bad thing about the writing was the repetitive use of certain words to describe Echo in Noahs mind; ‘nymph’ and ‘siren’ started to get on my nerves by the end of the book but at least it wasn’t all ‘flirty wink’ or ‘fine ass’ but that alone was just a minor thing and is the only negative aspect I have.

I thought I would be disappointed by this book because it sounded as though it would be a very deep book with some meaningful topics being raised – I was afraid that it would forget all of that and just focus on the ‘love’ aspect of the story. This book totally blew my mind as it was totally and utterly the opposite. Pushing the Limits focussed on the depth of topical issues and growing emotions in an unstable person throughout the entirety of the book. The topics of peoples troubled pasts took precedence and it was presented in a very informative way and the characters never lost that part of them that would always make them quite vulnerable – obviously people put on facades, but that’s a normal part of life sometimes, but I felt that the development of characters was very realistic. I felt that the development of love or emotion was very realistic as well, especially in the circumstances, it wasn’t rushed, gushy or over powering to the story line. The love was beautifully gradual with as many ups and downs and doubts as there would be in any normal relationship. I have found that generally when there’s a love aspect in a book, that characters, especially girls, will change their values around a boy they like, but Echo never did that and nothing was ever rushed – I found that to be quite refreshing as it wasn’t a hypocritical story with hypocritical characters that change as soon as a prospective boyfriend starts to ‘swoon’ them.

The emotions in this book, and not just the love for each other, was so powerful – the love for family, the emotions of not knowing and wondering, the idea of feeling lost in the world. These were just some of the feelings that I got from the story and at times it was so touching that I almost cried, (I don’t normally cry in books and it takes a lot for me to get all teary eyed) I felt so much sympathy with Echo and Noah in both of their personal situations that it made me think aboutmy life and how much I take for granted in the world. This kind of thought makes me feel as though I’ve really connected with the characters, and when that happens it is the making of a brilliant book – one that really makes you think.

I am ridiculously surprised with this book and I am so glad that I picked this one up after much hesitancy on my part. This has definitely marked contemporary novels up a level on my spectrum and I can honestly say that I absolutely loved it and it has changed the way I think. Amazing.

★★★★★